Article

My Comments

Some of us might think about upgrading an existing computer system to Windows 8 when this operating system is released rather than staying with Windows 7. Most commonly, there would be a lot of doubt about this process but, in some cases, it could improve the computer’s performance.

A Windows computer that was built up in the last four years i.e. since Windows Vista was launched could easily benefit from an upgrade to Windows 8. This is due to the reworked code that is written to work best with the recent generation of hardware.

The speed increase also comes due to natively-integrated desktop security software as well as Internet Explorer 10 and integrated cloud-computing support.

But I would recommend that the system which is being upgraded has current expectations for RAM and secondary-storage capacity. This would be 4Gb RAM and 128Gb of secondary storage as a bare minimum. If the machine uses a hard disk rather than solid-state storage, I would expect it to have at least 320Gb. As I subsequently mention, the operating system is at a price point that may allow you to budget in a hardware upgrade to these expectations.

Users can upgrade their Windows computers to the new operating system at a cost-effective price due mainly to the “electronic hard-copy” distribution that Microsoft is using i.e. to buy and download the operating system online rather than having to buy a packaged copy with an optical disk. This is in a similar way to how Apple are distributing the MacOS X Lion and Mountain Lion operating-system upgrades. It also comes with some attractive licensing terms including the ability for those of us who are building our own systems to legitimately purchase a “system builder” package.

It would be OK to go ahead with the upgrade if you can handle the changes to how the operating environment works, such as the new touch-focused Start “dashboard” and having to “descend further” to get to the standard operating interface. But I would recommend that those of us who aren’t computer-competent should stay with Windows 7 unless they are buying a new computer that comes with Windows 8.